Distinct Family of Colliding Waves in General Relativity

Abstract

We present a new family of exact solutions for the Einstein equations that describes colliding gravitational shock waves with cross polarization. In the limit of single polarization it reduces to a family that, up to a transformation of its metric functions, is distinct from the well-known Szekeres family. Furthermore, this family of solutions does not belong to the largest family found recently by Ferrari, Ibanez, and Bruni.